* Ryuutama, or as I like to call it “Hayao Miyazaki’s Oregon Trail”, can be seen on this site! http://www.j-rpg.com/ryuutama . Also, I officially announced the upcoming release (planned 2013) of Ryuutama. Stay tuned for a more official website soon. The core release will be in PDF format, with a very limited printing of books to coincide with an eventual kickstarter campaign (once the book is laid out). It’s a game with a very traditional adventure gaming structure, but the feel and style is very new.

* I can’t shut the hell up about Tenra Bansho Zero, because I’m so proud that it’s finally coming out. The Kickstarter is here, please back it! I mean, it’s funded five times over, but the more stretch goals that are broken, the more awesome we can generate for it (including lower the eventual MSRP of the final book, which has already happened once).

* The Komiket, or Comic Market, is the largest comic convention in the world. It’s held twice a year in Tokyo’s Big Sight, and boasts about half a million attendees for the wekend ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comiket ). Every year there’s 100 or so “Tabletop RPG tables” in a specific section for a day, where folks bring their replays, house rules, fan translations, fan rules, settings, etc, and sell and trade them with each other.

* Roll or Choice is a grand phenomenon: To make characters easier to create, some developers use a system called “roll or choice” (RoC): You roll on a table to see your result. If you don’t like that result, you can look around for another option and choose that instead. What’s the point of rolling, if you can just choose something anyway? The roll helps stop some analysis paralysis (looking over the list and taking painful amounts of time to decide on one), the one you randomly roll might suddenly shock and inspire you! Or if it doesn’t, maybe the ones right next to that option will!